Holiday

self-released; 2012

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Music from this release

Nick Principe, the sole proprietor of Port St. Willow, has made a record of falsetto-heavy, atmospheric mope-rock played at lugubrious tempos. He insists that it should be be listened to as a whole. This is not the sort of thing that gets you noticed in 2012. But while his debut LP Holiday lacks cultural cachet or wow factor, there's another kind of immediacy here if you're wired a certain way. This kind of spare urban brooding is often the result of some serious heartbreak, making you want to really listen for the lyrics. Whether Principe has endured the kind of personal tragedy that sometimes makes its way into press kits is ultimately irrelevant. This record is intensely absorbing based solely on what it's willing to explicitly share.

If it sounds like I'm describing a scenario simlar to the one that greeted the Antlers' Hospice back in 2009, it's for good reason. Principe is a collaborator and childhood friend of Antlers frontman Pete Silberman, and from that you could fashion a reasonable Okkervil River/Shearwater relationship dynamic. They share musical ideas, but the Antlers are more typical of a rock band that prefers demonstrative, emotional storytelling and skyscraping choruses, while Port St. Willow are more attuned to impressionism and studied musicianship. Holiday can fool you into thinking Principe isn't alone; it's a rich and lush record where most of the textures could still be conceivably looped and performed by one guy. There are unorthodox, yet hooky percussive patterns that almost wholly forgo kicks, snare hits and hi-hats, washes of soft, harmonic feedback, silvery filigrees of guitar.

Most of the songs on Holiday glide past five minutes, but there's a lightness and subtle evolution to Principe's arrangements that make Holiday a surprisingly brisk listen. What it lacks in traditional hooks, it compensates for with distinct and weighty gestures. The sophisticated melody contained with the guitar chords of "Amawalk" is power-pop turned slower-than-slowcore, leading up to a brass funeral march. An overdub of militaristic drum rolls pushes the already tense "Hollow" to the Holiday's earliest hints at catharsis, while the moaning peals of Principe's vocals on "Orphan" imply the release might never come. Within the instrumental and textural cohesion, reverb often determines mood, and it's rare to hear it as carefully and purposefully utilized as it is here. Just listen to how the mix dries up after the beatific "On Your Side" and allows for the dour drone of "Corners" to sound truly lonely.

There's little sweet or airy about Principe's falsetto, and his lyrics are akin to his arrangements, conceptually heavy but rendered with a gentle touch. It's sometimes difficult to know exactly what he's getting at. Family relationships (birth, orphanage, fatherhood) are encoded within the terse nature of his lyrics ("slow your breathing," "I won't be a father in a family that runs deep," "don't push me off the ledge you've grown to love"), suggesting conversations between isolated people. The words are evocative rather than exploitative, hinting at trauma having been processed and all that's left is a deep, muscular ache.

Holiday is so clearly intended as a single piece that I hesitate to suggest it's missing something, but I do find myself wishing for Principe to go all-in either lyrically or sonically. On a record like Hospice, the extroverted likes of "Sylvia" or "Bear" provided easy entry points, giving an indication that it was a deeply personal record meant to be related to on a mass scale. Holiday's goals might be different; it's by no means self-indulgent or abrasive or impenetrable, but I hear a record that Principe needed to make whether or not he sought an audience. That said, Holiday deserves an audience, and it'll be interesting to see how Principe reacts to knowing someone's listening in.